Voluntary stewardship vs environmental laws

Published September 23, 2012 - 3:02am Last Updated September 23, 2012 - 7:03am

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Each year in mid-summer, semipalmated sandpipers arrive in the Minas Basin from their Arctic nesting grounds on their migration to Surinam and French Guiana where they over winter. (MARK ELDERKIN)

Aboriginal people lived in harmony with the environment prior to 1900, and although the term “stewardship” was unknown to them, much of their lifestyle and interactions with the natural world were the best teachers.

Stewardship is a relatively new concept born in the early part of the last century. Stewardship might be defined as: “an ownership of responsibility for the environment. It means caring for the land in a responsible way to ensure that healthy ecosystems are passed on to future generations. Habitat stewardship for species at risk involves land use practices that maintain or recover the quality and amount of habitat required by rare species. Anyone who contributes to the health of the world around them, and takes action to look after it, is a steward.”

But doesn’t this last statement also mean: “Anyone who abides by the regulations of environmental laws, contributes to the health of the world around them, and takes action to apply it, is a steward?”

The former definition of stewardship clearly implies that it is voluntary and unregulated. But if stewardship is only voluntary and you don’t need material ownership of property to apply it, where did environmental law come from and what purpose does it serve in promoting a social standard of stewardship for the environment today?

If you abide by environmental laws under the banner of stewardship, arguably you do so voluntarily, since there will never be enough police to monitor and enforce our every action. The difference, however, is that failure to make “correct” choices and decisions might have legal consequences.

Reflecting on the history of Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal environmental laws brings to mind a litany of environmental devastation, misconduct by society and unwillingness on the part of individuals to apply common standards of environmental protection for natural resources. These were the catalysts for change and new laws. And flagrant violations of existing legal standards or actions predicated on voluntary stewardship or the absence of it will doubtless lead to more new regulations in coming decades.

Fortunately, many existing laws influence our interactions with water, air, the land and wild species. Adoption of the Migratory Bird Convention Act in 1912 is a case in point. Prior to 1912, Atlantic Canadians traditionally harvested eggs in the tens of thousands for pickling and other uses from seabird colonies each spring, and throughout the year shorebirds and other wild birds were killed for commercial purposes to the point where at least two species (Eskimo Curlew and Great Auk) eventually became extinct.

The new legislation laid out seasons and defined harvest limitations and, over decades, the numbers of birds slowly started to recover.

Arguably, the regulations laid out a sound framework of stewardship practices, with legal force. Standing at Evangeline Beach in about 1970 with Robie Tufts (then in his 80s), author of the Birds of Nova Scotia, he told me that he never believed shorebirds decimated by market hunting would recover so rapidly or dramatically. As we stood watching a flock of 40,000 birds foraging for corophium shrimps on the mudflats, he recounted his father telling him of great clouds of shorebirds that once passed through in migration, about 1860, in numbers similar to those we witnessed on that day.

Laws to protect birds of prey in the early 1960s, combined with efforts to re-establish and recover peregrine falcons that depend for food on migrating shorebirds, have successfully restored a predator-prey ecosystem in eastern North America unseen for nearly 250 years.

Environmental law and voluntary stewardship go hand in hand with positive benefits for society and resources on which we depend.